Keep On Trekkin’

What we’d like to see in the newly-an­nounced Star Trek tele­vi­sion se­ries

here we go again! Cbs has an­nounced a brand-new Star Trek show, due in 2017, fo­cus­ing on “new char­ac­ters seek­ing imag­i­na­tive new worlds and new civil­i­sa­tions”. We don’t know much else – ex­cept that it’s be­ing de­vel­oped by writer/pro­ducer alex kurtz­man, one of the brains be­hind the JJ abrams re­boot. here are some ques­tions we’re pon­der­ing…

Will it be set on a starfleet ship?

the press release seems to con­firm this will be a ship-bound show (hard to seek new worlds oth­er­wise, un­less you go the Star­gate route). but what if it’s an alien ship, rather than a starfleet ves­sel? Could we be in­tro­duced to an en­tirely new race? or what if the show fo­cuses, BSG-style, on a group of refugees look­ing for a home (very top­i­cal)? there are other al­ter­na­tives to those five-year mis­sions...

Will there be Crossovers From the Movie Cast?

as­sum­ing the se­ries is set in the same era as kirk’s voy­ages, will there be any op­por­tu­nity for the crew of the en­ter­prise to pop up in a few episodes? okay, per­haps not the big three, but see­ing sulu on TV would be pretty

cool, for in­stance. there’s also po­ten­tial for the films and TV se­ries to in­ter­act in the same way Agents Of SHIELD does with the Marvel movies. Mmm, tan­ta­lis­ing...

How Will it tackle big is­sues?

the press release from Cbs claims that the show will be “ex­plor­ing the dra­matic con­tem­po­rary themes that have been a sig­na­ture of the fran­chise since its in­cep­tion”. as well it should: af­ter all, orig­i­nal Trek cov­ered ev­ery­thing from racism to war. how­ever, there’s a dan­ger that turn­ing the se­ries into a heavy, Bat­tlestar Galac­tica-esque moral­ity drama would lose some of the charm and joy we’ve come to as­so­ciate with the fran­chise over the years. Don’t go too far, guys.

Could it be an­other re­boot of an­other Trek Show?

Cbs has said there’ll be a new cast of char­ac­ters, but could this be mis­di­rec­tion? We’ve al­ready seen the orig­i­nal Trek se­ries re­vamped and re­cast, so what if this new se­ries chooses to re­make The Next Gen­er­a­tion or Deep Space Nine? (let’s hope they forget about Voy­ager or En­ter­prise…) our gut feel­ing says they’ll whip up a whole new show in or­der to keep things fresh, but per­haps there will be off­shoots of the oth­ers.

Will it be Se­ri­alised or Episodic?

there are those who’d ar­gue that Star Trek worked best when ev­ery episode was a stand­alone tale, à la the orig­i­nal se­ries. oth­ers would say that giv­ing each sea­son a story arc is the only way to go – Deep Space Nine did it mag­nif­i­cently. With the fash­ion to­day for arc-plots, we sus­pect the lat­ter; longer nar­ra­tive sto­ries tend to be the most re­ward­ing. this could well be less an an­thol­ogy se­ries and more of a long-run­ning drama.